Subj : Re: Favorite version of Office?
To   : poindexter FORTRAN
From : Nightfox
Date : Fri Jul 03 2026 10:06:38

  Re: Re: Favorite version of Office?
  By: poindexter FORTRAN to nelgin on Fri Jul 03 2026 07:16 am

 PF> I remember 3.11 fondly, there was a lot of customization people were doing
 PF> with it at my job in 1994-1995. It was a far as 3.x could go.

 PF> I think adding Winsock support into Windows and getting my first real
 PF> taste of the internet is biasing me.

 PF> Norton Desktop, PC Tools Desktop were both popular and added functionality
 PF> to Windows. There was a workplace shell for Windows that made it look/feel
 PF> like OS/2, but I never saw it in the wild.

Yeah, despite any drawbacks of Windows 3.x, Windows 3.0 was the first version I used, and 10-year-old me thought it was just cool to see a GUI environment on a computer (at the time, I had used Apple II computers at school, and had used my dad's DOS-based PC at home - which is where I first used Windows 3.0).  At the time, I didn't know of things like OS/2 or GeoWorks yet (which were arguably techncially better than Windows)..

When I got my own PC, I remember using some Windows 3.1 GUI extensions, though I don't remember what I was using (and I'm pretty sure it wasn't Norton Desktop or PC Tools Desktop).  I remember using some GUI extension that displayed the time on every application window, though I don't remember what else it did.  And I had found some shareware Windows 3.x add-ons on local BBSes, such as things that added a trash can to Windows 3.x for file deletion & recovery (and one in particular that had a trash can that looked like it was from Mac OS). Also, I enjoyed using the After Dark screen saver collection (and I think you've said you used to work at Berkeley Systems Software?).

Also I remember when the Microsoft IntelliMouse came out in the mid-90s, which included some enhanced mouse software for Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, which had options for things like mouse pointer trails, and I remember thinking little utilities like that seemed pretty cool at the time..

For anyone into computers, I feel like the 90s was a time of a lot of cool computer innovations and significant change.  I sometimes think about how computer upgrades were a lot more significant at the time.  Things like adding a sound card, upgrading a CPU, adding more RAM, etc. all made a very noticeable difference, whereas most PC upgrades these days don't feel nearly as significant.

---
 þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com

.